I was curious about the in-depth player stats from yesterdays game, Brazil - Croatia (specifically to assess Ivan Perisic's impact in the game) and came across a bunch of sites that provide basic stats like goals, cards, possession, shots, etc. I found the UEFA homepage particularly informative. However I did not manage to find a single source that has the distance covered by each player at the World Cup. This is a very common stat in Europe that's frequently reported at half-time and post-game (e.g. here are stats for Champions League 2013-2014).

This statistic by FIFA for distance run by players in a match - has to be hyper-inflated. Let's do the math! A football field is 105m long for a world cup and 75m wide. In order to run the 9500m (almost 6 miles) as reported above - a player would need to run the length of the field - call it 100m - 95 different times....in a game that lasts for 90 minutes. That is basically a full length of the field once every minute.....and NO PLAYER comes close to doing that. First, NO PLAYER even runs the entire field more than a couple of times (if at all!)......from goal line to goal line because of the
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user4824Jun 21 '14 at 14:18

The players are on the field for 90 minutes and if they walk with an average speed of 5 km/h which is not too fast they would pass 7.5 km for the time of the match. Obviously they run for most of the time of the playing time, sometimes jogging and very often with 80% speed with occasional 100% sprints. By the way, the most exhausting part of the match are the duels not the running itself. The stats are very realistic and I would like to know if the stats are for running only or total movement (including walking).
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user4859Jun 24 '14 at 14:56